The onetime home of live, local music and dozens of expertly curated radio shows hosted by St. Louisans will become the latest acquisition by a national chain of Christian music stations.
The leaders of KDHX 88.1 FM will sell the nonprofit radio station’s FCC license and its broadcast tower to national chain K-LOVE for at least $4.35 million. The price will increase to $4.8 million if the sale is finalized quickly. A bankruptcy court judge needs to approve any sale, and the station’s creditors have about three weeks to note any objections.
KDHX leaders announced its agreement to sell in a Tuesday announcement posted to the station’s website, and provided more details in a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday morning.
“We've tried to do the right thing and we've tried to put the organization in a situation that it could have a future,” KDHX board President Gary Pierson said. “That was the best that we could do.”
Some station supporters were dismayed by the news but had warned for months that the financially imperiled station, which declared bankruptcy this month, would settle its debts by selling its most valuable asset: the broadcast license.
“This is devastating to to all of us who have put so much effort into this station over the years, and devastating to the entire St Louis music and arts community,” said Steve Pick, a former KDHX DJ who was on his way Tuesday evening to a strategy session with other members of the activist group LOVE of KDHX. “It's just unbelievable that something like this could happen,” Pick added, “despite all of the efforts that we made to try to get them to speak with us and work with us to make this not happen.”
KDHX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization earlier this month and made K-LOVE its debtor-in-posession lender, a status that made the Evangelical network KDHX’s chief creditor and put it in line to effect a takeover of KDHX’s broadcast license.
KDHX owes its creditors $2 million, station lawyer Robert Eggmann said. Its bankruptcy filing showed that its largest outstanding debt is a $120,000 construction loan to former board member Mark Hamlin. Six of the largest creditors are staff members, including Executive Director Kelly Wells, who is owed $73,381. Expenses related to the station’s 2013 move to its current home in Grand Center accounts for $1.3 million of its debt, Eggmann said.
K-LOVE is one of the largest national chains of radio stations playing contemporary Christian music. It is owned by the nonprofit Christian ministry Educational Media Foundation. K-LOVE stations play syndicated content and do not typically have local DJs, though the network produces reports on faith-based activities in its broadcast markets. Users can search for local churches on K-LOVE’s website.
Prior to Tuesday’s press session, Pierson had not made himself or any other station representative available to St. Louis Public Radio for an interview since October 2023.
Pierson and the KDHX board had communicated since then almost wholly through written statements distributed by a Brentwood public relations firm, even while presiding over the bankruptcy and planned sale of a nonprofit community asset that its supporters see as a vital piece of cultural life in the region.
In the process, AHC Consulting became the station’s second-biggest single creditor, according to court filings.
LOVE of KDHX recently offered KDHX $100,000 in donations and promised to collect another $100,000 in pledges — if the station would agree to change its leadership. The board of Double Helix Corporation, the nonprofit corporation that controls KDHX, declined to discuss the proposal or seek changes before rejecting it last month.
Station supporters are looking for ways to hold up the sale in court, Pick said.
Before public controversies over its leadership and cutbacks in programming, KDHX held concerts at its studios, invited local and touring musicians for on-air performances, offered a Folk School and maintained a conspicuous presence at St. Louis cultural events.
KDHX was founded in 1987.
Pierson said KDHX can still fulfill its mission without a broadcast license, and that it might take a different form with different leadership.
“The organization's mission is to create community through media. It doesn't rely solely on a broadcast radio format. And we think there is a possibility of a future. We don't know exactly what that's going to look like. I don't think that I'm the person who's going to decide what that looks like. It's going to be decided by other people in the future.”
This story has been updated.
